[✔️] June 16, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Wed Jun 16 10:57:03 EDT 2021

/*June 16, 2021*/

[from the Independent]
*Farmers abandon crops, Utah residents asked to pray for rain amid 
record hot weather in parts of US*
Some southwestern cities face searing temperatures of 110F or more
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/us-weather-heatwave-arizona-california-b1865585.html

- -

[predicted & arriving]
*Dangerous heat wave underway in West, will shatter records*
Andrew Freedman
A punishing mid-June heat wave is set to scorch much of the Southwest 
and West this week, with Las Vegas potentially eclipsing its highest 
temperature on record, which stands at 117°F.

*Why it matters:* The heat will build in a region that is experiencing a 
record drought, leading to dangerous fire weather conditions, high power 
demands, and causing water supplies to dwindle further. The heat itself 
could prove deadly...
- -
*Threat level: *The National Weather Service forecast office in Las 
Vegas is warning of significant threats to life and infrastructure from 
Monday through Saturday as the heat builds and refuses to relent...
- -
*Of note: *The heat will raise power demand at a time of decreased 
output at hydroelectric plants. It will also dry soils further, 
expanding the area of "extreme" to "exceptional" drought, the worst 
categories.

Already, Lake Mead, the nation's largest reservoir by volume, has hit 
its lowest level on record, and this heat wave is likely to evaporate 
more water.
Red flag warnings for hazardous fire weather are in effect in the Sierra 
Nevada Mountains, which are normally still covered with snow at this 
time of year.
By the numbers: For Phoenix, the NWS is projecting a 55-75% chance that 
the city would reach 115 degrees each day during the Tuesday through 
Friday time period.

*Context*: The heat wave and drought are working in tandem. Given the 
antecedent drought conditions, more solar radiation can go directly into 
heating the air, rather than evaporating moisture in soils, lakes, and 
rivers. This boosts temperatures higher than they might otherwise be...

In addition, one of the most robust conclusions of climate science is 
that heat waves are becoming more intense and longer-lasting as the 
climate warms overall.
In recent years, there has also been a trend toward stubborn and 
sprawling areas of high pressure aloft, known as heat domes, that block 
storm systems and keep hot weather locked in place for days at a time.....
https://www.axios.com/dangerous-extended-heat-wave-break-records-southwest-d705bcd8-cc87-4b6b-b099-1306116450e9.html

[there's always mate' tea]
*Climate crisis to hit Europe’s coffee and chocolate supplies*
Increasing droughts in producer nations will also make palm oil and soya 
imports highly vulnerable, study finds
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/15/climate-crisis-to-hit-europes-coffee-and-chocolate-supplies

[aspirational intention]
*THE LATEST TOOL IN FIGHTING WILDFIRES IS HOMES THAT WON’T BURN*
Building codes are on the frontlines of California’s fire fight
By Justine Calma Jun 15, 2021
WithWith wildfires raging more uncontrollably in the West than they have 
in the past, experts say it’s time to change the way we fight them. The 
battle now starts at home, where people live, before a spark ever 
ignites a flame in a nearby forest or brush.

Until recently, efforts to keep people and property safe have largely 
focused on preventing and fighting off wildland blazes where they start. 
That includes beefing up the firefighting force and managing forests so 
that dry vegetation doesn’t become tinder for a mega blaze. But that 
alone won’t be enough as climate change fuels more intense fire seasons 
each year. Communities now need to adapt to an unstoppable threat.
*
**“THAT’S NO LONGER AN ASSUMPTION WE CAN SAFELY REST UPON”*
“We are nested in this belief and this assumption that we can 
domesticate wildfires to the point where we will be safe from it. The 
reality is that with climate change and the scale, the pace, and the 
severity with which wildfires are currently burning, that’s no longer an 
assumption we can safely rest upon,” says Kimiko Barrett, lead wildfire 
researcher at the nonprofit Headwaters Economics.

Fifteen of the 20 most destructive fires in the state’s history have 
taken place since just 2015. Last year alone, blazes tore through a 
shocking 4 million acres of the Golden State, smashing the previous 
record of roughly 2 million acres scorched in a single fire season.

“These fires are just reaching a magnitude where we can’t just say we’ll 
treat the forest and we’ll be okay,” Barrett says. “You have to start 
bringing the human dimension to this now. What, as a society should we 
be doing differently in terms of where and how we build?”

California has already rebuilt itself in response to another type of 
disaster: earthquakes. The 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake was the 
most recent wake-up call in 1994. It sparked a rush to change building 
codes and upgrade existing structures. Buildings and freeway bridges 
were reinforced. Los Angeles mandated retrofits.

Now, there’s a call to do something similar for fires. It’s getting 
louder, especially as more people spread out into more rural areas 
within what’s called the Wildland Urban Interface. While there’s been 
some finger-pointing at people who decide to live closer to where 
wildfires burn, some experts warn against blaming those most vulnerable. 
Housing in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, and even in their 
surrounding suburbs, is becoming increasingly unaffordable. That forces 
people out of city centers and closer to where wildfires burn.

“We have a housing crisis,” says Crystal Kolden, a former firefighter 
who is now an assistant professor at the School of Engineering at the 
University of California, Merced. For her, asking residents to move to 
less fire-prone areas is unfair and unrealistic. “We don’t do that for 
other natural hazards.”

*“WE HAVE A HOUSING CRISIS.”*
“All the people that are saying, ‘Well, why do people live in these 
rural fire prone areas?’ are the ones that are sitting on a massive 
earthquake fault,” she says. “They are the beneficiaries of massive 
federal and state infrastructure upgrade projects that made those cities 
less vulnerable to earthquakes.”

California is already ahead of other states when it comes to 
implementing building standards for fire safety, but there’s a lot of 
work left to do. Back in 2008, California created a new building code 
requiring fire-resistant construction. That proved to be a success when 
the most destructive wildfire in California’s history, the Camp Fire, 
tore through Butte County in 2018. Over half of the homes built after 
2008 stayed standing, according to a McClatchy analysis. But most of the 
homes in the area are older. Of those, far fewer — just 18 percent — 
were spared from the blaze.

In the absence of state-wide mandates for older structures, it’s largely 
been up to individuals to harden their homes against blazes (although 
there are stricter standards in some of the most fire-prone areas). Some 
homeowners have made headlines, like an engineer in Sonoma County who 
took 15 years working to fireproof his home — filling his walls and 
covering his windows with flame-resistant materials. His house was put 
to the test during the 2019 Kincade Fire that destroyed 374 structures 
nearby. His home survived.

Beyond using materials that don’t easily catch fire (especially for 
rooftops), property owners can also take care to prevent embers from 
finding their way inside by replacing vents. Creating a “defensible 
space” around a home is also crucial; homeowners should have a buffer 
zone around their home that’s free from vegetation or other materials 
that could become dry fuel, according to experts.

Those changes are most effective when they’re widespread. “It cannot be 
one home alone. It has to be ubiquitous across the neighborhood,” 
Barrett says. “Voluntary measures don’t work. You could have five 
neighbors that agreed to mitigate their property but you’ve had that one 
neighbor [that’s] centrally located and they don’t believe they need to 
do anything. So, he exposes the rest of his neighborhood to wildfire.”

While some might choose not to make fire-minded improvements, other 
households might not be able to afford the retrofits needed to keep 
their home and community safe. “There’s just not the resources to do a 
lot of the work that we know is effective in reducing wildfire hazards,” 
Kolden says. “But it is a societal problem, not an individual problem, 
and that’s why it’s a social justice issue.”

*“IT CANNOT BE ONE HOME ALONE.”*
That makes a state-wide strategy for updating older homes all the more 
important. State agencies announced in February that they will come up 
with new standards for homes and communities to “harden” themselves 
against fire, part of a broader effort to make it easier to insure 
homes. And a $536 million wildfire prevention bill signed by Gov. Gavin 
Newsom in April provides some financial assistance to residents to start 
that work on their properties.

There still might not be enough funding to reach everyone and keep costs 
from racking up for lower-income households. In May, Newsom proposed an 
unprecedented $2 billion for wildfire preparedness. But most of the 
money would still go toward firefighting and forest management. Of that, 
$40 million is earmarked for retrofitting existing homes. (There’s 
another $250 million chunk for making communities more resilient to 
disasters, including wildfires, earthquakes, droughts, and coastal 
flooding.) In comparison, a wildfire planning strategy outlined in a 
recent Stanford white paper calls for $1 billion a year for home hardening.

“I believe state government has recognized the need to incentivize or 
subsidize or help support communities engaged in retrofitting for 
safety,” says J. Keith Gilless, dean emeritus of the University of 
California, Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources and chair of the 
California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection. “Although, you know, 
the total magnitude of the problem is huge.”
https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/15/22534039/wildfire-prevention-home-hardening-california

- -

[because the globe is heating]
*Opinion: Here’s why the old playbook for fighting wildfires doesn’t 
work anymore*
One of their key proposals is to rethink the use of full-time federal 
firefighters. Traditionally, these workers divided the year between fire 
prevention — tasks that include managing planned fires in cooler months 
to clean the forest floor of dead and dried branches and leaves — and 
then suppression during the warmer months. The problem is that with 
fires burning year-round, Duncan’s group says, it makes more sense to 
hire more full-time firefighters, with some dedicated to prevention and 
others to suppression.

This two-front approach would make it easier to tame overgrown forests 
and, with that, give fires less “fuel,” as vegetation is known in the 
business, to burn.

Homeowners also have to do their part. With more and more Americans 
building houses close to fire-prone wildlands, it’s unrealistic to 
expect firefighters to save structures when lives are at stake. Those of 
us who live on the edges of forests can help by building vegetation-free 
zones between the wildlands and our homes. But the essential thing is to 
be ready to flee and leave it all behind when a wildfire is barreling 
your way. That’s necessary to save your own life and to save 
firefighters from risking their lives to rescue you.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/14/heres-why-old-playbook-fighting-wildfires-doesnt-work-anymore/

[What happened?]
*“Back to normal” puts us back on the path to climate catastrophe*
The data is in: The pandemic did nothing to slow climate change.
By Rebecca Leber  Jun 15, 2021
- -
“We ultimately need cuts that are much larger and sustained longer than 
the Covid-related shutdowns of 2020,” said Ralph Keeling, a geochemist 
who measures carbon pollution at Mauna Loa.

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage globally but starts to abate 
in the US, here are four ways to understand the new “normal” of the 
climate crisis.

*1. Climate change is accelerating despite the pandemic*
While emissions dropped last year, carbon and methane concentrations in 
the atmosphere just reached their highest-known level in millions of 
years. Think of it as filling a plugged bathtub with water: Even if you 
turn down the faucet for a little while, the water will keep rising...
- -
*2. Fossil fuels still rule the economy*
In 2020, renewable energy overtook coal consumption in the United 
States, and electric vehicle purchases soared 43 percent over their 2019 
level. But fossil fuels still reign in transportation and the power 
sector, the world’s two biggest pollution sources...
- -
*3. The global target of 1.5 degrees Celsius is almost out of reach*
One of the key developments of the 2015 Paris climate agreement was a 
new target for containing climate change: restricting warming to 1.5°C, 
and “far under” the more disastrous 2°C.

In that effort, “normal” won’t cut it. The return to flying, driving, 
and commuting carves away from a limited global budget of pollution, 
which represents everything the atmosphere can afford before the 1.5°C 
target is reached. A United Nations agency, the World Meteorological 
Organization, updated its analysis in May and underscored that we’re 
essentially out of time. It found a fairly good chance — 44 percent — 
that the Earth will hit 1.5°C of warming in one of the next five years. 
That’s double the odds from just one year ago...
- -
*4. Public opinion hasn’t changed either, which is surprisingly good news*
A return to normal doesn’t have to mean climate change careens out of 
control. It’s a path governments choose if they continue to subsidize 
fossil fuels and fail to meet the challenge of investing in renewable 
infrastructure.

The pandemic hasn’t diminished people’s appetite for action on climate 
change, argues Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on 
Climate Change Communication who has studied American opinions on 
climate change. “Public opinion about climate change hasn’t changed at 
all. It actually picked up a little bit,” Leiserowitz said. “I don’t see 
any evidence that people’s views have changed dramatically, either 
because of the pandemic or the economic crisis.”...
- -
“A majority of Americans actually think that taking action to deal with 
climate change will grow the economy and increase the number of jobs,” 
he said.

Most Americans don’t think there has to be a zero-sum trade-off between 
climate change and economic growth. The Biden administration has 
capitalized on that view, making the case for “building back better” and 
trying to boost the economy with a climate-focused infrastructure 
package. But this can’t happen without large-scale political action. The 
US may savor a returning sense of normalcy — but the whole world need to 
remember that normal was never good enough.
https://www.vox.com/22522791/climate-emissions-post-covid

[heat melts ice]
*Polar concerns rise as ice now melts ever faster*
June 15th, 2021, by Tim Radford
- -
“We may not have the luxury of waiting for slow changes on Pine Island; 
things could actually go much quicker than expected,” said Ian Joughin, 
of the University of Washington in the US.

“The processes we’d been studying in this region were leading to an 
irreversible collapse, but at a fairly measured pace. Things could be 
much more abrupt if we lose the rest of that ice shelf.”

He and his colleagues report in the journal Science Advances that the 
Pine Island glacier has already become Antarctica’s biggest contributor 
to sea level rise. The pace of flow remained fairly steady from 2009 to 
2017, but they found that data from Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel 
satellite system showed an acceleration of 12% in the past three years.

The Pine Island glacier contains roughly 180 trillion tonnes of ice, 
enough to raise global sea levels by 0.5 metres. Researchers had 
calculated that it might take a century or more for slowly-warming polar 
waters to thin the ice shelves to the point where they could no longer 
stem the glacier flow. But it now seems that the big player in the shelf 
ice collapse is the glacier itself, as the flow rate increases.

“The loss of Pine Island’s ice shelf now looks possibly like it could 
occur in the next decade or two, as opposed to the melt-driven 
sub-surface change playing out over more than 100 or more years,” said 
Pierre Dutrieux of the British Antarctic Survey, a co-author. “So it’s a 
potentially much more rapid and abrupt change.”...
- -
*Snow fall dwindles*
Abrupt change, too, may be on the way in the Arctic Ocean. British 
researchers used a new computer simulation to explore measurements from 
Europe’s CryoSat-2 satellite. The scientists report in the journal The 
Cryosphere that the thinning of ice in the Laptev and Kara Seas north of 
Siberia, and the Chukchi Sea between Siberia and Alaska, has stepped up 
by 70%, 98% and 110% respectively.

Sea ice diminishes each summer and forms again each winter; each 
successive summer reveals an ever-greater loss, as the ice itself thins 
and the area covered by ice dwindles.

Calculations of ice thickness have always allowed for the falls of fresh 
winter snow. But since the formation of sea ice has been later every 
year, there has been less time for the snow to accumulate. Such things 
make a difference.

“The thickness of the sea ice is a sensitive indicator of the health of 
the Arctic,” said Robbie Mallett, of University College London.

“It is important as thicker ice acts as an insulating blanket, stopping 
the ocean from warming up the atmosphere in winter, and protecting the 
ocean from sunshine in summer. Thinner ice is also less likely to 
survive the summer melt.” − Climate News Network
https://climatenewsnetwork.net/polar-concerns-rise-as-ice-now-melts-ever-faster/

*Climate Anxiety text from a few months ago*
     "We are in a climate emergency. And you were born at just the right 
moment to help change everything."
     "Climate anxiety without climate justice is a gateway to ecofascism."
https://thephoenix.substack.com/p/its-ok-to-have-climate-anxiety (white 
text on a black screen is more comfortable to read)
https://gendread.substack.com/p/sarah-jaquette-ray-on-the-unbearable
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-climate-anxiety/

[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming June 16 ,*

June 16, 2009: The 2009 National Climate Assessment Report is released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wze6RMK90vw
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2009/06/24/global-climate-change-impacts-in-the-united-states-%E2%80%93-report-overview-part-1-of-a-series/ 

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